Tick
by ItsAFunnyThing
Summary: Time is a curious and fascinating thing. To Chuck, it's the source of all of her greatest problems.  Although there is no real profanity, I have rated this story T just to be safe in case I decide to be more profane later on.


**Hello! For those of you who happen to stumble upon this, please, PLEASE review! I'm literally down on my knees begging in front of my computer. This is a very submissive and uncomfortable position, so the faster you review, the less my knees will be hurting tomorrow. Feel free to comment on any grammar mistakes or anything you find unsightly enough to write about. Cheers!**

Tick

Chapter 1

Chuck was falling. She felt no wind on her face, felt no sensation of falling, yet she was plummeting towards some unknown entity. She knew she was falling, there was no explanation about how she knew she was falling, just her own perception. She slowed as she neared the entity, her feet landing gently on a hard surface. She walked forward towards this nameless object. It was the only thing she could see; everything around her was shrouded in darkness. Yet she did not feel uncertain as she walked forward, instead she felt a sort of relaxation, a feeling of ease like that which came from much practice, as if she had done this many times before. The object she was moving towards gave emitted a soft, ghostly green glow. As Chuck neared this glowing object, she could make out exactly what it was. It was a small pocket watch; a clock on the end of an aged golden chain. Chuck reached out and picked it up. It began to glow brighter, yet Chuck did not have to squint to look at it. Its front was engraved with an elaborate circular pattern with small impressions that looked like characters and equations in a language Chuck did not recognize. The watch began to glow brighter and brighter, and soon Chuck was forced to shield her eyes.

Chuck awoke with a start and looked around. She was staring directly through a crack in her shutters, through which a sharp beam of sunlight was streaming. Chuck squinted her eyes and blinked. She rolled over to face her nightstand, upon which stood a digital clock much too old to still be used by someone so young. It read 9:06. Chuck swiftly jerked upwards, and was about to throw her covers off and race to her bathroom before she realized it was Sunday. She let out the large breath she had inhaled when she had thought was late for school, and lay back down. Then she figured that she had might as well get up now before she fell back to sleep and woke up again at noon.

Chuck got out of bed and walked to her bathroom. She looked in the mirror at her tired face. She brushed her teeth and continued to stare at her reflection as she contemplated her dream. She had always been interested in the psychology behind dreams; they were the subconscious trying to help you figure out everyday problems. She was very interested in the symbolism that people and ideas tend to take on in dreams. She tried to figure out what her falling had represented, or what the watch represented. But the details of the dream began to grow vague as Chuck began to wake up, so she shook it from her thoughts as she headed downstairs to breakfast. Her brother was already at the table.

"Hey Chuck," he said between bites of waffle. Chuck's brother Alan was seventeen, tall, and skinny as a pole. Chuck always wanted to know why that was, because all he ever did was eat. 'Baseball,' was always his reason, although he only ever played during the season. He was very smart, although his knack for strategy and logic only showed when he was playing video games, which was frequently. He was good-natured and mellow with a sarcastic sense of humor that was always good for making Chuck laugh. He and Chuck were very close; she told him everything.

"Hey Al," answered Chuck as she sat down. "jeez, there any waffles left? You have like, ten on your plate."

"I'm a growing boy," he said as he took a waffle from his plate and put it on hers. She smiled at him and proceeded to pour syrup into each square.

"I had the dream again," she said.

"The one with the glowing clock thing?"

"Yeah. What do you think it could mean?"

Al grunted and shrugged in response, cheeks filled with waffle. Then he thought about it, swallowed and answered.

"How am I supposed to know what goes on in teenage girls' heads? See, I have an inferior guy's brain that just pales in comparison to the advanced complexities of a teenage girl's psyche. It's hard enough just talking to you guys. My fickle boy's brain is just utterly useless when it comes to this kind of stuff."

"You know, you can just tell me if you don't want to talk about this."

"I don't want to talk about this." He grinned at her as he took a big bite from his fork. Chuck scoffed at him and playfully stole another waffle from his plate.

"Hey, aren't you going sketchy thrift store shopping with your friend later?" asked Al.

"It's not sketchy! We just have to go to some second-hand stores to find something for a History project!" Chuck finished her plate and got up to put it in the dishwasher.

"Okay, okay," Al put his hands up, chuckling. "didn't know you were so self-conscious about your weird shopping habits."

Chuck glared at him, although she knew that was exactly the response he wanted; he was just trying to get under her skin because he knew he could. She knew she could aggravate him just as well as he could her, but she usually just let him do the annoying because she knew he liked to. She went upstairs to change. Not long after, the doorbell rang.

"Yo, Charlotte! Your little friend is here for your weird creepy shopping trip!" Al yelled from downstairs.

"Thank you, Al." She answered flatly. She grabbed her purse and rushed downstairs. "And don't call me Charlotte!" She told him as she ran out the door.

Standing outside was Chuck's best friend Lia. Chuck was marginally taller than Lia with a pale complexion, grey eyes and long, curly blond hair. And they couldn't be more of an odd couple; Lia was her complete opposite. Lia was small Indian girl with short black hair, hazel eyes, and a personality that made her seem bigger and bigger the more she talked, which was often. She, unlike Chuck, had no trouble speaking without thinking.

"Hey, Al, maybe you shouldn't be talking about creepy." Lia shouted. "Alright, you ready?"

"Yeah." Chuck and Lia walked down Chuck's driveway and turned right onto the sidewalk.

"Aren't you kinda freaked out about going to a creepy little thrift shop?"

"Nah, not really. My brother was just making fun of us."

"But all that stuff in there…other people used to own that stuff! I don't know where it's been…what kinda stuff people used to do with it!"

Chuck laughed. "Well, I never actually thought of it that way. I always like to think of everything in the store having a history, like someone's pen or something that they used to sign their marriage license, or an old toy someone got for their tenth birthday that they really wanted."

"Wow." Lia said. "You're such a hopeless romantic it's not even funny," Chuck looked down. "But at least that sounds a lot better than a sketchy little shop with like, Hitler Youth paraphernalia all over the walls or something."

They stopped in front of a small store with a big blue sign over the window that read _Amissium Tempus_ _Artifacts._ Lia pushed open the door, and they stepped in to the sound of bells jingling over the doorway. They immediately started to walk down the different aisles, each row separated into little cubicles, each packed full of trinkets, from vintage magazines to jewelry to clothes. There was even a whole cubicle dedicated to vintage airplane models. The store gave off a very distinct smell. Chuck didn't think it was unpleasant, though; it had a sort of musty familiarity to it, like the smell as you flip through the pages of a well-aged, well-loved book. She stepped inside a cubicle that had a great many small trinkets in it to get a better look at them. There were a few World War II bullets that people had welded into different objects, there was a small dagger with a bejeweled handle, and an intricately engraved fob watch with elaborate circular patterns and small writing Chuck couldn't make out.

"So, what did you get? You got your stuff so fast, you didn't even come to get me." Lia asked. Chuck stopped walking.

"What?" she asked. She didn't remember buying anything. She hadn't even remembered leaving the store. She glanced down, and in her hand was a small paper bag. She opened it. Inside, wrapped in paper, was the fob watch.

"Awesome," Lia said, taking the watch from Chuck gently. "It's beautiful! But, you know, all we had to get was some old literature for the project. I got this newspaper. It's from D-Day. How cool is that?" She gave the watch back to Chuck and, reaching into her own bag, gingerly unfolded the newspaper.

"I…didn't buy this." Chuck said, staring at the clock.

"Well, it kinda looks like you did." Lia stated, being sarcastically blunt.

"Yeah, it does," Chuck still stared pensively at the clock. "It's like…I must've blacked out or something...because I just can't remember getting this watch." She pushed the small button on its top and it popped open. Chuck's eyes grew wider as the second hand ticked softly around in its circle. She followed it closely, followed its path as though it were a racehorse she placed all her money on, begging for each second, each move of the second hand to progress to the next, she felt as though the watch and her body were connected, each tick in perfect synch with the beat of her pulse. She felt if the second hand didn't keep moving in its precise, perfect move onto the next line, her heart would stop.

"Chuck? What's wrong with the watch?" Lia brought Chuck out of her trance.

"What? Oh,...I don't know. I'm gonna go back and exchange it for a magazine or something. I have no idea what just happened."

"You alright?" Lia asked, suddenly looking concerned.

"You wait here. I'm just gonna go run in and return this."

"Okay. Don't be too long. We should probably get you home, you look pretty terrible."

"Yeah okay." Chuck answered, she only half-heard what Lia had said. She pushed open the door of the shop, the bells jingled and she walked up to the counter. The man at the counter looked to Chuck as the perfect man to own an antique shop. He was tall and thin, with salt-and-pepper hair and a lot of wrinkles, although unlike most facial wrinkles, each crease was vivid and defined like the stroke of a brush, and each one seemed to tell a different story, each one proof of an experience he had, and each one contributing to the final piece.

"Yes, Chuck?" he asked, smiling gently.

"Did I tell you my name?" she asked, puzzled. She didn't normally give out her name to checkout clerks who owned second-hand shops.

"Oh yes, you did. It's perfectly normal, the memory loss. It can cause some adverse effects for first-time users."


End file.
